Christmas with family

My niece Dorothy, Jennefer, and I visited my little sister and her family in Atascadero for Christmas! Here's a watercolor-filter of a photo I took in San Luis Obispo, shortly after we arrived, and were already out and about, in search of coffee and Christmas gifts. The miniature palm tree provided a stark contrast to the snow and ice we had left behind in Denver.

My little dog Mandy was a well-behaved traveler, as usual. She curled up in her pet carrier at my feet, and slept through most of the trip. She also used her pet carrier as her home away from home, throughout our visit.

Bob's big pre-Christmas present to all of us, was an afternoon zip-lining adventure in Santa Margarita! It was pouring rain in the morning, and we all expected it to be canceled, but they said they were going, rain or shine, so we showed up, wearing the best clothes we could find, for rain and mud. They were ready for us, with waterproof boots and jackets to borrow. The group before us came back soaked to the bone and shivering, but the rain stopped and the sun came out, just as our shuttle bus left the office for the adventure site. The bus driver gave us a wonderful tour of the central California hills, and we wended our way through the vineyards and cow pastures. We all had a wonderful zip-lining adventure! The worst weather we saw, was a bit of fog and mist, which I thought made it even more fun. There were several (I think six) separate zip-lines. We zipped down the first line, then hiked up to the next launching station, and rode down that one, and so on, until we got to the last station, where the bus picked us up again, and took us back to the office.

Several of us went to see the new Star Wars movie, "Return Of Skywalker." Everyone had their own opinion. I enjoyed it a lot, but I learned a long time ago, to suspend my disbelief, if I want to enjoy a Star Wars movie.

Jennefer and I stopped at the Que Pasa Mexican Cafe by the theater, for a nice warm dinner after the show. When Bob and Dorothy found out we were there, they jumped back in their car, and came back from the house to join us. We enjoyed the fun holiday decorations and our family's company! 

Marissa and Brighton hosted a delicious Christmas Eve dinner at the house they bought late last year, just a mile or so from where they had been renting. They had done an amazing job, of getting it ready for themselves, and for their traditional family dinner. I was so caught up in enjoying the evening, that I didn't take any pictures of their perfectly-furnished and decorated home, oops!

We spent a wonderful Christmas morning with sister's family at her house! My niece Dorothy came with us from Colorado, my two nephews Brighton and Tyler were there with their wives Marissa and Annalisa, Marissa's mom Jodi, my grand-niece Alice!

Jennefer and others helped Mikele prepare an amazing Christmas dinner. Even her cat Misha poked her head into the event.

On the day after Christmas, Bob took the three of us Coloradans to "The Great American Melodrama" in Oceano, which has gotten to be a fun holiday tradition for us. They always have done a serious version of "A Christmas Carol," but they also do several other skits, that are usually very humorous and enjoyable. We all enjoyed it! I was coughing a little during the show, and realized that my throat was a little ticklish. I was hoping it was just something in the air, but alas, it was the harbinger of another of my traditional post-holiday colds. Bob bought us dinner at Old Juan's Cantina, a Mexican place nearby in Oceano, which we had never tried, and enjoyed quite a lot. We had a bit of an adventure getting there and back on highway 101, as CalTrans had closed the I-5 highway that day, due to heavy snow in the Grapevine Hill area, and a lot of that traffic had moved over to 101, and brought it almost to a stop. My Waze driving app helped me find some very effective routes to avoid a lot of that traffic.

On our last day there, we woke up to find the previously sparsely-populated parking lot full of cars, several of them running, in the cold moist early morning. I realized that some of those people jammed up on highway 101 the day before, had finally decided to spend the night in Atascadero, on their way to/from their various post-holiday destinations. It felt a little like the moment just before the Le Mans car race, with the puffs of steam coming out of a bunch of cars, and people scurrying around the parking lot, throwing their last few possessions into their cars, in preparation for jumping back onto the highway for the last part of their race (oops, I mean journey) home.

We met a few of the family, for one last delicious breakfast at our favorite place there, "Country Touch Cafe," before hitting the road for the airport. Just driving the short distance from the motel to the restaurant was interesting, with the 30 degree 100 percent humidity generating thick fog all along El Camino Real through the middle of town. It was burning off quickly, so this photo doesn't really do it justice.

We had an uneventful flight home, with Mandy being her usual calm traveler self. We were a little surprised, to see so much snow on the southern Sierra mountains, but it all made sense, when we remembered the news stories about everyone's holiday adventures on the highways.

Thanksgiving in New Hampshire!

We enjoyed a delightful Thanksgiving with my relatives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire! I finally found some time to download the pictures from my phone, so I could post them here. Some of them are modified - I've started using the Waterlogue app to add a little watercolor touch to my stories.

We flew out of Denver, just a few minutes before the beginning of what turned out to be a heavy snowfall, that left nearly two feet of snow on the ground behind us. Lucky us! Here's a pic of the cold threatening sky, while we were having breakfast at my favorite Denver airport restaurant - Pour La France.

Denver snow pics, courtesy of my neighbor, about halfway through the storm.

Portsmouth was cold and breezy. We managed to take some fun, chilly, windy walks around the local neighborhood, to the Hannaford grocery store, and in a few local parks. My cousin gave us several guided tours of the local area, as we were driving around. We visited Odiorne Point State Park, and the Seacoast Science Center, on one of those cold and windy days.

The Science Center in the park included some fun aquariums. There was an interesting story about the birth and migration path of a young whale, and how the sea lanes can have a disastrous effect on the whale population. My niece had never seen a live seahorse before!

The walking path along the shoreline provided some wonderful views of the Piscataqua River, the Whaleback Light observation point, Fort Foster, and many other beautiful points of interest on the opposite shore.

We followed one of Odiorne Park's loop trails out into the local forest for awhile. It was very peaceful, with a few historical monuments to be found.

Thanksgiving day was fun - everyone helped get the food ready, and the dinner was delicious! We enjoyed the meal with my cousins, and their extended family and close friends. It was very pleasant, even for someone like me - out of my element with people I don't see regularly.



We enjoyed a short walk in the Urban Forestry Center, and my cousin discovered a new trail there. I felt privileged to be offered the opportunity to walk their dog Midnight, who was very rambunctious and energetic. Managing her leash took both hands, so I didn't get to take any pictures.

We ventured into downtown Portsmouth for a meal or two, some sightseeing, and window shopping. It's a beautiful New England town! Here's a pic of Portsmouth's Pilot boat, in front of their three very colorful signature tugboats. We visited a pop-up shop nearby. Interesting concept - it's a popular ice cream shop during the warm season, and a venue for local artists to display their wares, during the holiday season.

A big snowstorm hit New England while we were there, starting just a day before we were due to fly back home from Boston Logan airport. It started when we were inside the theater, watching the "Knives Out" movie, which was well done and very entertaining. We were surprised to find it snowing heavily, as we walked out to our car. This is the pretty little snow-covered bench in my cousin's front yard, the next morning.

The snow lightened up, just before we had to drive our rental car to the airport. We were a little concerned about the drive  in the new snow, but the roads were fairly good, and we made it to Logan as easy as pie. The highway was lined with beautiful snow-frosted trees, most of the way down the coast. There were a few slushy slippery adventures in lane 1, and the usual mayhem approaching Boston on I-95 and SR-1. I'm not a fan of relying on shuttle buses to get from the car rental to the terminal, but it is what it is... And the unexpected twist is, we jumped on the blue line bus, settled in for the ride, and then learned, long after it had passed our terminal, that they don’t all stop at every terminal. Luckily, and partly due to my extra-cautious advanced planning, we had lots of time, so we were able to enjoy the extra walking back to our departure terminal.

Continuing our airport experience... we were at our gate with plenty of time, so we were delighted to be able to run off and grab some crab cakes for dinner at Legal Sea Foods. I remembered really enjoying this restaurant, when we were at Logan two years ago, but didn't realize it had moved to a far more convenient location since then.

We were finally aboard our delayed flight home from Boston... and the aircraft’s windows were frozen over. My camera saw through it way better than I could. With that much ice on the vertical window, I wondered how much must have accumulated on the horizontal surfaces of the fuselage and wings. I was a little surprised when a mobile deicing vehicle came to do the job, but so glad that they were ready and able to deice our plane.

Finishing up my story, with a watercolor filtered photo of the tail of a nearby aircraft, as we were pushing back from our gate. We were glad to have an uneventful, albeit late-night, flight home.

So many scams, so little time…

It seems like all the news outlets are talking today, about the scam purporting to offer Costco $75 online coupons, in exchange for propagating the scam to your friends. So sad that they need to offer this one specific scam warning... Especially considering that there are thousands of scams out there that sound equally juicy, but are equally fake and usually very malicious. It might be wise, to remember the old adage: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!“ Maybe another good thing to remember, is that the Internet is a huge game-changer, because it allows anyone on the planet to contact you - bringing the criminals right to you - wherever you are.

Here are a few general guidelines from the FTC for avoiding being defrauded.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0060-10-things-you-can-do-avoid-fraud

Claude Monet Exhibit

Just finished walking through a wonderful exhibit of Claude Monet‘s work at the Denver Art Museum! I didn’t realize, or probably had forgotten, that four of the places he focused on were Paris, London, Venice, and the French/Italian Riviera. So, not only did I get to enjoy his beautiful work, but it brought back so many memories of visiting those places… and also his final residence with that magnificent garden in Giverny!

Around the World westbound!

I finally completed my "round-the-world westbound" adventure, flying the Cirrus Vision SF-50  personal jet! Feel free to read about the whole trip, in the separate blog I created, to tell the story of that adventure, which has an individual blog post for each flight. The Blogger site I'm using, automatically puts the most recent blog post at the top, which makes it a little tricky to read the posts in the order I published them. Here's a link to the first blog post. Once you get there, you can click on the "Newer Post" link at the bottom, to show the next post, and follow the story in the order it was posted.

Gunn 1969 Reunion 50

My high school class' 50th reunion is in the Bay area this weekend. I'm a little sad that I'll be missing it. I was asked by two friends to join them on the reunion planning committee, which I did, and I've been trying to be helpful for most of this past year - helping set up and maintain the reunion website, trying to find contact info, for the many people for whom we have no other information than their name, and supporting the decisions and coordination for some of the details of the planned events. It's been fun, connecting and working with the other committee members, some of whom I'd never really known. When we talk about the various activities, they sound like fun, but I won't be making it out there.

Trip to Ouray, CO

We spent a long weekend at the end of September, on a trip to explore Ouray, CO. I've been wanting to get there for decades. My neighbor Fred once made a point of enthusiastically recommending that I visit the town and surrounding area. The supposedly 5.5 hour driving trip from Littleton took us about eight hours, including some leisurely stops for breakfast and lunch, and two fuelups. I suppose we could've planned that better, by starting out with a full tank of gas, and food in our stomachs, but we enjoyed the stops as well as the drive, and we left plenty early, so it didn't really matter. Our drive took us South on 285 to Poncha Springs, then West on US-50 to Montrose, and 550 South into Ouray.

We stopped just before Kenosha Pass, to marvel at the huge stands of beautiful Aspen changing to their Fall colors. Then when we got moving again, we crested the hill, and the official Kenosha Pass viewing area was even more amazing, but there were dozens of other people and their cars there, so we kept moving.

Getting close to Ouray, this striking view of the mountains ahead caught our attention. I took this picture because of my fascination with the peak off in the distance, but later I realized that I loved the fence line leading into the picture, and the long stand of trees on the right, that were highlighted by the afternoon sun. Not to mention the nice clouds and sky. Did I ever mention I love those?

We arrived in Ouray in mid-afternoon, and settled into our hotel. While walking to dinner, the Beaumont Hotel was the first well-maintained historical building we encountered. It looked good, but even better, with those mountains in the background.

The old County Courthouse has a lot of history, of course. I vaguely remembered hearing that scenes from the movie "True Grit," starring John Wayne, were filmed there. We ran across a local resident on one of our walks around town, and he was proud to announce that he was invited to pose for a picture with Mr. Wayne, back when they were making that film.

As we were walking back from dinner, we marveled at the quickly changing shadows on the beautiful mountains surrounding the town.

Heading up the Ouray Perimeter Trail on Saturday morning. This trail is a great way to see the local area, while getting some exercise. It leads up past the Box Canyon concession, then the Ice Park, and this South Reservoir, then loops around the entire town.

There were lots of Fall colors to see on the Perimeter Trail. This pipeline routing water from the Uncompahgre River to the South Reservoir was surrounded by beautiful views.

We encountered this peaceful meadow shortly before we decided to head down into town from the Perimeter Trail.

Several streams cross the Perimeter Trail. It was really a delightful experience.

So many beautiful Fall colors in the mountains at this time!

We really enjoyed this hike! But it also really tired us out. We need to do a lot more of this!

Here's what the Perimeter Trail looks like on the "All Trails" app I was using, to keep us on track. The blue dot is where we've just come down one of the access trails, to get back into town. We got about 2/3 of the way around the loop. From what we were told, the other part is lower, and winds through town, so it's not as interesting. But our real reason for coming down, was that we had had enough for the day, and were ready for our late lunch!

On Sunday, we drove from Ouray over the Million Dollar Highway to Silverton. We saw some amazing scenery and mines, and stopped on top of Monarch Pass, which I've heard about for years, but never seen. This is one of my favorite pictures from the drive.

We had enough time after we got back from our drive, to visit the upper and lower Box Canyon trails. The lower trail to the waterfall was cool and refreshing, and the power of the water was impressive.

We stopped on the way back home, to snap a photo of the Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison. It's a beautiful long lake, especially in the morning, with the sun sparkling off the water.

What a trip. We are so glad we went!

MSFS 2020 Preview!

I just ran across several Flight Simulator vloggers' posts, positively *raving* about Microsoft's pre-Alpha demo in September, of their new Flight Simulator (MSFS) 2020 software, planned for release next year. After watching their video blog posts, I'm getting tentatively excited about the prospect of a new MSFS release, after the long hiatus following their release of Flight Simulator X, ten years ago. If you're a FlightSim enthusiast, and you were unaware of this new development in the past few weeks, you might want to watch this half-hour video by a knowledgeable and well-spoken vlogger who goes by the handle frooglesim.

Trip to Florence

We visited Jennefer's mom in Florence, Oregon, which is near the coast, about an hour drive from Eugene. We took Mandy with us on the airliner, and as usual she was an awesome traveler. Our rental car turned out to be an Audi Q3 crossover, which delighted me, as a friend at work bought one several years ago, and raved about it, and I've been wanting to try one out.

Sorry I can't get to my photos from the trip, from where I am right now, so I've added some hyperlinks to get you to some pertinent information and pictures on the net.

We went for a few outings to explore the area. The surrounding forests and river give the area a calm and peaceful feeling, and we enjoyed a few walks there. We visited downtown Florence, and the Bay Street restaurants and shops on the Siuslaw River waterfront, and took too many pictures of the Siuslaw River Bridge, which carries Highway 101 across the Siuslaw River, not far from where it meets the ocean. Of course, we also visited the River Roasters coffee shop several times.

We visited the Heceta Head Lighthouse, read some good information posted on the walls, and learned from some local rangers, who were there to talk to visitors about the area. There is a nice trail to get up to the lighthouse from the beach, and we followed it a little farther, as it continues on to the top of the hill and beyond. We enjoyed the lush forest and some awesome views of the beach below.

We enjoyed chatting with Jennefer's mom while having breakfast in the mornings. Jennefer fixed dinner for the three of us, almost every night, so we found ourselves at Fred Meyer grocery store almost every afternoon, on the way home from whatever adventure we'd had that day.

Jennefer's niece brought her family to visit one day. We walked to the nearby North Fork River and hunted for crawdads to catch and release. Then her niece prepared a delicious Paella dinner. I didn't think I liked Paella, but I love it, the way she prepared it.

We got our fair share of overcast and rain, considering that we were on the Oregon coast in the Fall, but we enjoyed that, too. On the really wet days, we relaxed in the living room, with the wood burning stove going.

Boomer / Millenial humor

Heavy sigh... I just ran across this baby boomer self-deprecating humor, on a local Word Of Mouth Facebook page. Maybe it's as true to the mark, as it seems... Which reminds me, I also ran across this basic network tutorial recently, when searching for "how to not be such a newbie on the Internet," and it was well-enough-written, that I thought it might be worth sharing, even though some of my friends and family could have written it themselves. Enjoy!

Dark Web overview

Here’s a fairly understandable rundown on the Surface Web, Deep Web, and Dark Web, in case you’ve been wondering. It’s presented by InfoArmor, which sells info protection services to companies. The existence of the dark web is a driving reason for keeping your login credentials secure, by using a different username and password at every site, and for considering signing up for one or more of the identity protection services out there. Y’all be careful out there!

About USB connections

Here's a pretty good article about the evolution of USB connectors, ending with the USB-C connector that some of the newer phones and laptops have. I wasn’t aware of the bidirectional power feature, which sounds like something cool that will soon be well-exploited. I forgot what the old USB-B connector was - it was nice to be reminded.

Getting to sleep

I can only hope that the suggestions in here for dealing with a racing mind before sleep are helpful, as I tend to have the opposite problem. I hope it‘s helpful for my sleep-challenged friends!

Cool Mars Rover mission video

I’m so glad I found this Mars MER video again! I thought it was gone forever. This was the best and most fun video simulation of a Delta II rocket launch and its associated Mars Exploration Rover (MER) spacecraft mission that I’d ever seen. There‘s no narrative, so you get to figure out the technical details of the launch and trans-Mars injection, and appreciate the clever aerobraking and landing approaches, from what you see, which is quite a lot. Enjoy!

Worst user interface

I feel so fortunate in many ways, to have been in the middle of it, as a software developer, when the first graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were being designed and standardized. I read the documentation! I understood the purpose and idiosyncrasies of modal dialog boxes, checkboxes and radio buttons, and so much more. Then, when the Web came along, a new set of UI standards emerged, and has continued to evolve. Smart phone apps have continued to push the evolution, as they desperately try to support working user interfaces on teeny tiny screens. Those people who care about having their websites and apps easy to use, have worked hard to follow those standards. And then, there are those people, who are determined to “think outside the box“ (often without really knowing what’s *in* the box), and continue to present their clunky, difficult-to-navigate UIs to users around the globe. I just ran across this hilarious website, that explores the idea of doing almost everything wrong, according to established web UI standards. I confess to having dabbled in this dark humorous art, early in my app development years. Enjoy!

Outgoing Introvert

Yeah, this is probably me. I’ve been thinking of myself as a social chameleon, an introvert who has made an effort to survive in social situations, but maybe this is more accurate.

Some work-based humor

Bwahahaha! These work-related humorous tweets are a cut above most of the clickbait I run across out there! I lost so much time reading through them, before I realized they just keep on going, and I was in danger of spending the rest of my life there. My sides hurt from laughing. Some of them had me thinking of you - you know who you are! I’ve gotten really good at skipping over the ads - sorry if they bother anyone.

Cupola Cam back online

Another of my many simple pleasures - the Littleton Courthouse Cupola Cam is back online! This is a little user-controlled web camera that's mounted on the top of the courthouse. They have a predefined location called the "Cupola Cam Greeting Spot" that points the camera toward a spot on the sidewalk just outside the courthouse. Here's a snapshot I took of myself, using my iPhone, while I was out walking today.

Google Maps fake business listings

Here's a good, but really disturbing to me, article about the millions of fake business listings on Google Maps. Y’all be careful out there!

Apollo 11 mission 50th anniversary

Wow. Fifty years since Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. Pretty significant anniversary! With the TV running nonstop with Apollo stories on Smithsonian channel, I was motivated to pick up my copy of the book “Apollo: the race to the moon“ and re-read the chapter about the Apollo 6 flight, which had multiple failures, and still satisfied its mission parameters. What a story! The Flight Software on that vehicle was amazingly robust!

Dad's 100th in June!

Jennefer and I visited my Dad in June, for his 100th birthday! He is struggling lately, showing more signs of his age, which is slowing him down quite a bit. We tried to make a few temporary changes to his schedule while we were there - taking him out to some favorite places for breakfast and dinner - but it didn't go well, and we ended up putting almost all of his usual routine back in place, and just tried to be in the places where he would normally be, during his regular day. This photo is from breakfast at Sara's Kitchen, a delightful breakfast restaurant just across the road from where Dad lives.

Things were quite different this visit, since Adele had a bad fall in February, and she's no longer living in the beautiful large house she's been in for years. Instead, she's living in a small room at the La Posada rehab facility. For Dad, it's not so much of a change, since he just has to get a ride to, and home from, a different (closer) location every evening, to visit her. She still feeds him dinner, since their dining room allows her to bring him in as a guest every evening. Their schedule is quite rigid, and we "kids" found the need to get out for walks every day, even in the blazing hot Florida sun, to decompress and recoup.

A wonderfully helpful family friend Anita, who lives near him in North Palm Beach, put together his 100th birthday party at the Chesterfield Hotel in Palm Beach. He wanted to keep his party small, so there were *only* 30 family and friends there. My sister Mikele and her husband Bob came from California, and her daughter Dorothy came from Colorado. My cousin Rebecca came from New Hampshire. Dad's good friend Rick from the 1960s made arrangements to surprise him, by flying out from California with his wife Lynn and his son Corey, who now lives in Portland, Oregon. Dad's Pan Am friend Rich, who flew with him in the 1960-70s, including one very memorable and adventurous flight, has been driving down from northern Florida for years. Dad did a good job standing up and addressing everyone during the party - he seemed very pleased to acknowledge that he had visitors from each corner of the country.

We had a bit of a catastrophe on our last day there. I got a text that morning from Bob, saying he had fallen in the hotel shower, and broken his wrist. He was in a lot of pain, and had a very swollen hand, with his wrist at a very odd angle - clearly a serious break. The paramedics arrived shortly, bundled him up while we packed his things, and transported him to the nearby hospital's Emergency Department. He told the ED people that he still wanted us all to catch our flight home, so they made the extra effort to stabilize his wrist, and pronounced him ready for traveling, within 3 hours. We had to wait 45 minutes for his pain prescription at the local pharmacy, so we grabbed a quick breakfast. Then we were on our way to Ft Lauderdale, supposedly a 1 hour drive, just in time to be delayed by several traffic jams on I-95, which lost us so much time, that after skipping our gas fill-up stop, and turning in our rental car, we only had 5 minutes to spare, before they closed the aircraft door behind us. Bob took advantage of our delays on the highway, to rebook his flight to go straight home that evening, skipping his planned visit with us. What a trip!